UX Discovery is the first phase of a project and is the time when you explore the issue, talk to those involved, and define the project. Some of the best techniques for discovery are; Exploratory Research; Stakeholder Interviews; and Workshops. I actually got to be a part of a couple of discovery phases during my internship at Big Motive over the Summer and learnt a lot about the best way to do them. One way I found to be particularly effective was stakeholder interviews. We were redesigning a system and interviewed those who used it and walked them through the system, asking questions along the user journeys about how they felt about it. This was really effective and allowed us to pinpoint big issues in the system that we wouldn’t have understood unless we used the system on a daily basis. I can see how useful stakeholder interviews are for discovery and will make a real effort to use them for this project.
Another part of discovery I got to be a part of was workshops. I helped run a workshop for a project where we got groups of stakeholders to participate in activities to unearth issues. This was something I found really interesting and it was great to see how beneficial just listening to free-flowing discussion can be to finding issues. I also found it interesting how the organises have to be part of the workshop, but are just there to steer the conversation rather than ask direct questions. While it may be harder for this project to get a full workshop set up, I will definitely consider the benefit of letting users and stakeholders direct the conversation in getting to the issues rather than just asking direct questions.
The Discovery Phase in UX Projects
A good way to research UX design is is break down already existing systems to identify the good and bad within them, which allows you to find what you need to do to improve issues in systems. To explore this way of UX research, we did this in class by breaking down a GP website. We were tasked with going through the user journeys for registering, finding a GP, booking an appointment, finding opening hours, ordering prescriptions, and contacting, and breaking them down into the actions required for them, any questions about the journey, happy moments, pain points, and opportunities.
One of the most interesting findings from this exercise was to do with the booking system. Finding the type of appointment was relatively easy, but actually trying to book it was an issue. It would either direct you to an external 3rd party site to book with, which causes user distrust, or return no available slots. On further examination, we believe this is due to users first having to have a normal check-up, then when a specific appointment is required, booking slots become available to the user account, however, this wasn’t clear and may be confusing to users who already know what they want to book. This was further backed up by the discovery that you couldn’t book general check-ups with a GP, and you have to ring the practice to book. This would be incredibly frustrating to users as they may spend a lot of time trying to book through the online system only to find that they can’t.
This process was really useful as it allowed me to explore a range of specific user journeys, and also allowed me to identify what user journey had the most issues. I can see how tackling specific journeys is far more effective than looking at the whole site at once, as I found that most issues were in journeys that looked ok from the surface. This technique is something I’ll continue to use as it’s a really effective way of identifying problems with systems and what works about them too. While this works for improving an existing system, I can see this as an effective form of competitor analysis to places to make a new and better product.
I’ve been reading “100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People” by Susan Weinschenk and thought now would be a good time to start exploring some of the ideas I’ve taken from it in my blog, as I’m beginning to look at research and discovery, which involves exploring how people think and feel about issues.
One of the most important things from the book which I think is important for me to consider at this time is the ideas around “Groupthink”. Groupthink is a bias where people who get along tend to agree with each other rather than voice their actual opinions. Groupthink can lead to important issues not being dealt with, which is really important to avoid when looking at issues in healthcare. The book suggests a solution to this which is to encourage disagreement and debate when exploring issues. I think this is something I will need to consider for this project as I may be talking to stakeholders during the discovery phase and making sure to get genuine opinions will be vital. I’ll make sure to keep this in mind as I go forward and do as much as possible to deter bias during discovery.
Another point I felt was really important for me to think about at this stage is the idea that stories and anecdotes persuade more than data alone. This means that when researching issues relying on data won’t be enough and to make a successful product you need to really explore people’s emotions and thoughts around issues. This is something I’m already aware of but think it’s always good to revisit. As this project is lasting all semester, I have more time than usual with it. With this additional time, I want to try and conduct proper user research by talking to those affected by the issues my project is trying to solve. Actually exploring real people’s emotions and thoughts around issues, I think will allow me to create solutions that are far more effective than solutions that are based solely on facts and figures.
This has been really useful in getting me thinking about how I’ll approach my project’s discovery phase. I think it will be really important to focus on getting the user’s and stakeholders’ genuine opinions and finding this through free-er conversations rather than direct questions. I also think it will be important to look out for pitfalls such as group think and other biases which could lead to limiting the project. Overall this has been really useful and has given me a lot of great ideas around how to properly conduct my discovery.